


Choosing

by Ladycat



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-12 00:20:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1179668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladycat/pseuds/Ladycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>William's needs were fairly uncomplicated; give him affection and companionship and he was yours with the strength of a Cocker spaniel's adoration. Spike, however, had become a driving force and his needs were far more varied, for all they stemmed from the same desires as William craved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Choosing

When he was William, he’d known he had no choice in life. His youth was devoted to his father’s iron whims, adolescence spent clinging to his mother’s skirts, lost in a haze of moth-balls and soft, powdered hands. He’d thrown himself into poetry, impossible relationships he knew would never work for all his attempts at gallantry. They were all he’d had that was _his_ , untainted by the specter of a father long gone and mother who quietly ached to join him.

They’d failed him, one and all. So when a dark beauty with the lilt of gypsy in her eyes and a promise of spangled stars in her voice approached him, he had not denied her. Strange enough that a woman wanted his paltry offerings, yet when the sting of pain came and he cried out in weakness, he was not surprised. Pain was something young William knew well, for all he spurned the physical variety, and that his gift should come on waves of sharp agony was poetically appropriate.

When wood and dark earth had broken the skin underneath his fingernails, knuckles raw and not as bloody as they should be, William had rejoiced. Finally, now, he would be free to make his own choices. He believed that utterly as his new princess, Drusilla, she who danced instead of walked upon this earth, took him back to his former home and made him truly a man. That he was dead was irrelevant—he knew he was a man now, with the right and ability to make his own way through the world.

His mother had been the first blow, tearing herself from him even after he’d bound them, as he’d though, permanently.

His newfound in-laws were the next and final blow. Darla ruled their little clan with heels that clacked upon the ground, echoing the clink of chains. Where she indulged, Angelus reigned supreme, witch-dark laugh haunting dreams William knew he should no longer have. They tolerate his presence, barely allowing him to survive and only by making it clear that it was Drusilla they indulged. It was humiliating, a slap of bright pain that William had thought himself now past, now free of. So like the teenager he’d never allowed himself to be, William rebelled against his elders and became Spike who took what he wanted—for a price.

Spike never balked at paying it. So long as Drusilla was his, her cool body a welcome repository of his hatred and disgust that even _dead_ he was not free, then Spike would take his lack of choice and squeeze until lemonade puckered the skin of his fingers. It was not the best of solutions, not even after Darla dismissed them and Angelus abandoned them. Spike ruled over the heads of minions, ignorant creatures he kept mostly to make himself feel superior, but he knew it was a lie. He claimed to indulge his love, yet it was more desperation than care that kept him pliant.

William, of course, had a secret. He loathed the cold emptiness of being alone. It’d kept him by his ailing mother’s side years after he should have abandoned her, sending small sums to keep her and their servant Anna from losing all respect, the way all he’d known had begged him to do. That was proper for a man of his limited means and station. William had feared venturing off into a world he could not tame, and would not give before him. So he had stayed, as he did with Drusilla, because even her twisted affections were better than none at all. William was a romantic at heart, and no matter how Spike tried to destroy the last lingering traces, deep within his own mind he knew that he never would. He loved and loathed who he was in equal measure, too much of both to ever allow true destruction. He lied, then, to all who saw and asked of him, convincing the world at large that he was Spike, brash and in control of more than just himself. That he needed no one, and his choices were driven by his own whims, Fate whimpering as he mauled at her.

Drusilla always knew better.

Oh, how he’d hated her when she abandoned him. Hated what one town, one group of raggedly powerful children had accomplished, so much so that he’d returned, just to remind himself of two very powerful facts: they had choice. It was their true strength, why they survived time after time, even as they waited for the next hill in the road or rock that slipped into their sandals. They _chose_ to fight in that manner, and excelled at it—for all the blonde Slayer with a yen for one-liners complained that she was given none at all.

The other fact was that, once again, Spike was not given any but the worst of choices in life. He could have run from Sunnydale, truly struck out on his own the way he never had before—but he’d known with fatalistic certainty that such a thing would never have happened. He would not be granted such freedoms, no matter what he might do. So, wearily, he’d returned to face mockery and scorn and then the ultimate humiliation of the government—fat, ailing _bureaucracy_ —removing the final bit of control he had left to him.

Chipped and helpless, dependent on others for survival, Spike had trembled, wavered, and collapsed into nothingness. Oh, the children did not notice—they had no idea of the masks people wore, for all they were slowly building their own. The elder might have, but he’d been too busy trying to recapture his lost youth, and anyway, he did not care. None of them did, not even the one he’d been foisted on to, the one who smelled of self-pity and lust, bitter chocolate mixed with oil.

Lying on his back on the sofa-bed he’d broken in a childish fit of pique not moments before, Spike realized something. He _had_ a choice. Only one, but the angels sung and golden light filled the spaces behind his eyes, because at this moment, for the first time in all the years Spike could remember—William had a choice. One only he could make, unfettered by other needs and wants.

True, it wasn’t the _best_ of choices, and the decision could result in disaster, but it was _his_ to make, and his consequences to deal with. His alone.

So he made it.

Williams needs were fairly uncomplicated; give him affection and companionship and he was yours with the strength of a Cockerspaniel’s adoration. Spike, however, had become a driving force and his needs were far more varied, for all they stemmed from the same desires as William craved. The application however ...

It took several weeks before his host finally started to believe. Spike was not surprised, for Xander was young and distrustful the way only children can be, with lines drawn in mud—but when finally won over, there was no doubt, no second-guessing, no hesitation at all. There was only the decision and the consequences, exactly as Spike—and William—had always wanted.

“You know, I _really_ don’t get you, sometimes.”

Naked and panting as he worked himself loose, Spike chuckled. “Say that like you’re complaining and I might do something about it.”

“Oh, no.” Xander shook his head, absently reaching out to pet Spike’s as it rolled slightly. “No, we are far, far past mere verbal explanations. Words can never express the insanity that is you propositioning me—and the straight jacket I obviously need since I said _yes.”_

His cock was still warm as it slapped against his belly, the remembered heat of Xander’s hands a pleasant accompaniment to the burn and flex of preparing himself. “Don’t need a straight jacket. Them little blue pills I wouldn’t say no to, though—thought the point of hooking up with a nineteen year old was the inability to get soft.”

The glare he received was scorching, prompting a hidden smile, but it was the devilry lurking in lust-darkened eyes that Spike thrilled to see. He’d made his selection carefully, weighing and measuring with a merchant’s determination because he had only one shot at this. Xander pursed his lips, head tilting as he thought—and then abruptly grabbed the balls that bounced against Spike’s wrist, twisting them roughly. “I think you missed the point of the ‘no sex for two days’, this past weekend. I think maybe I’ll have to remind you that when I don’t want sex, _you_ don’t want sex. No matter how hard you might be.”

Spike cried out, hips working as his body shuddered in reaction, heart singing with William’s joy. All this made a sick kind of sense Spike never wanted to explain to anyone. They would only see the fear, the reluctance to change after over a century of unable to direct his own fate. They would never understand that relinquishing the choice was still making one. Well. Xander might, when it was late at night and they were cuddled together on the bed, discussing the still shell-shocked Scoobies that did not know how to handle a Spike that fought _for_ them, coming to heel whenever Xander called.

Pain was a choir singing hymns when Xander yanked his fingers free, quickly sliding in to replace them despite Spike not being quite ready. That was his point, as Xander drove his cock deep and hard into Spike’s body, taking what Spike had already given him. “I remember you boasting about how much control you had,” the almost-man whispered, Angelus’ cruelty tempered with a human’s care. “So I’m going to fuck you, Spike, force you to ride me and suck me off until I can’t get it hard anymore for any reason. And you’re not going to come _once_. Not until I say you can. Maybe I’ll let you a few days from now. Maybe.”

Spike cried out, body contracting as he struggled to not to come from those words alone. He wouldn’t, though, because he no choice but to obey. That was the decision he’d made at so very long last: to stop fighting and _revel_ in the heat of knowing he had no control. And did not want any.


End file.
